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crimsonearth

Have creatures save themselves from drowning and non-agg creatures flee combat

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Two suggestions in one, I know, but let me separate them out.

 

Every server is full of non-aggressive mob corpses within a tile or two of dry land. The nice GM spawns this Christmas that centred around starter deeds - many of which are close by water - were also littered with dead Beefalo and Pillow Mints and so forth. It's a crying shame, can actually become pretty saddenning if not distressing for those of us who love animals and don't like seeing and hearing digital ones dying needlessly any more than real ones, and also just doesn't make sense. Creatures who accidentally end up in or flee to water to escape a mob would make for dry land if it was within reach. Instead you see them two tiles off shore just taking damage ticks with little blood splurt animations unless and until someone jumps in the water to trigger their flee response (which may or may not be back to land). Worse still, since they can't swim, you can't even lead them back to dry land with a rope because they become un-led as soon as the game sees you're trying to move them through a water tile. I know this involves more fiddling with creature movement and AI mechanics, but it would make servers nicer places for those of us who aren't impervious to poor dead creatures if they were coded to just head for land when they hit water, and would reduce corpse clutter considerably.

 

Second point - less crucial but related and also involves fiddling with the same code presumably so I'll squeeze it in here: non-agg creatures were re-coded with fleeing mechanics a few years back, but they don't seem to flee when it's most obvious they would take flight - when attacked. Granted, a new player can be taken down by a provoked non-agg of sufficient FS, but in the vast majority of cases, non-agg creatures are being attacked by mobs or players that will kill them with ease. Chickens and pheasants just stand there being beaten to death. Running away wouldn't save non-aggs from death, probably, but it would be more realistic, would save the occasional new player from an embarrassing end when they're learning the game, and people who hunt them for sport (who I'm not really here for anyway, but I don't want to get into a fight with those people) will quickly become strong enough to take any non-agg out in one to a few hits anyway, so their attempt at fleeing, particularly when wounded, shouldn't prove too much of an obstacle. I can see and would concede the argument for not coding fleeing behaviour into sea-creatures, but I don't know if they're coded differently or if it's one code for all.

 

I know I'm gonna get people sneering at these suggestions - a lot of folk seem to find it ridiculous and over-sensitive that we don't all want to play a game surrounded by the corpses of gentle, non-aggressive creatures that look like our real world pets and farm animals so maybe the realism argument holds more weight: So many of the in-game mechanics that the devs have worked tirelessly on go to great depths to mimic a realistic simulation of crafting processes and plant propagation and so on; perhaps we could have more realistic non-agg creature behaviour to go with it and less corpse clutter as a bonus?

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Fleeing creatures would have to include stamina drain and slowness. In Ultima Online it's one of the things that can be very annoying, majority of mobs will try to flee when their health goes down below certain point and while it adds some realism, it can get old very fast. Especially for non-casters.

In Wurm, mobs never seem to run out of stamina but players do. We only get FS gains on mob's death, combat drains stamina as well. New players could have a hard time trying to kill anything because player runs out of stamina to chase the mob while mobs can run at their maximum speed seemingly forever. Add the fact that mobs ignore slopes and can flee up a mountain (even when trying to catch a wild horse, every   single    time!) and we have new players trying to catch that sheep who is running away up a 100 slope rock face. They get no FS gain unless they manage to deliver the killing blow and still have to heal their wounds after the unsuccessful hunt. Poultry would be the only viable option for new players to raise their FS high enough to single-hit-kill something bigger, like a sheep or a dog.

 

I would like to see fleeing mobs in Wurm but only if they had similar limitations that players do and that probably means messing with code more than it's worth and introducing more "surprise features".

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I would like to at least see "domesticated" animals not move to attack when they are being slaughtered.  Whether you have to lead it or hitch it to something, slaughtering kine should not be "combat".

 

A specific slaughter action with a confirm would be good.  I accidentally killed one of my pigs, which a confirmation would have prevented.  Using keybinds I hit 2 instead of 3 (or something like that) and attacked it instead of giving it some food.  I quickly left, de-targeted and returned - to successfully feed it, but it died of its wounds before I could get it healed.  <sigh> He was still only adolescent.  Delicious, though.

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On 1/7/2020 at 4:13 AM, TheTrickster said:

I accidentally killed one of my pigs, which a confirmation would have prevented.  Using keybinds I hit 2 instead of 3 (or something like that) and attacked it instead of giving it some food.  I quickly left, de-targeted and returned - to successfully feed it, but it died of its wounds before I could get it healed

Yeah, well that's a whole other suggestion in itself but an important one I think people have made before. Why there isn't a confirm button for attacking a branded, tamed or saddled creature, I don't know - but I do know a lot of people who've accidentally misclicked and attacked a beloved pet which can often be fatal in one swing. :(

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+1 I'm not fond of the corpses littering our lakeside either. Makes it feel like the water should be diseased or tainted. Also a +1 for fleeing domestics. They run when you try to lead them (At least the females do), so why not when you try to slaughter them? And I do think it would be quite fun to watch new players chasing after chickens. lol

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For enhanced mob fleeing to work, they would have to make ranged attacks more effective, I think.

Edited by Farmerbob
clarity
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On 5/31/2020 at 10:03 PM, Delacroix said:

-1 to any sort of creature fleeing from combat.

 

Ever kept actual chickens?

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14 hours ago, Farmerbob said:

For enhanced mob fleeing to work, they would have to make ranged attacks more effective, I think.

I would be game for this as well! :)

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On 6/1/2020 at 9:06 PM, TheTrickster said:

Ever kept actual chickens?

 

Ever made a suggestion that isn't aimed at ruining a game?

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1 hour ago, Delacroix said:

 

Ever made a suggestion that isn't aimed at ruining a game?

 

Why yes, thank.  In fact I have not ever made any suggestion about any game with the intention of ruining it.  Probably because I am not completely irrational.

 

For the record, I was making a trivial joke about a trivial point (that even the most docile and helpless of creatures should turn and attack).    Responding with a sweeping personal attack is completely disproportionate.  Regardless of differing opinions on the merit of various things, we are all interested in a more enjoyable Wurm experience.

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